Electrodialysis Resource Recovery Patents: Who Leads, Gaps 2026
- Filing has already peaked. Activity rose to 129 filings in 2024 after a flat 2015–2022 stretch, and the partial 2026 count sits far below that peak — a maturing rather than an emerging field.
- China dominates the filing venue. 469 of the tracked records were filed at the China receiving office, more than three times the US total of 142, concentrating both prior art and competitive risk in Chinese filings.
- No single assignee is currently active. Every top assignee by volume — including the largest Chinese filers — shows zero filings in the latest tracked year, suggesting consolidation or a lull rather than a live filing race.
Filing growth compares 2021 (58 records) with 2024 (129) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 995 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the electrodialysis resource-recovery patent record shows
Electrodialysis resource recovery covers the use of electrodialysis, electrodialysis reversal and bipolar membrane electrodialysis to pull acids, bases, lithium and other salts out of aqueous streams rather than simply desalinating them. The 995 patent families tracked here sit at the intersection of separation engineering and inorganic chemistry: most records classify under B01D (separation processes) and C02F (water treatment), but a meaningful share extend into C01D alkali-metal compounds, C22B metal extraction and C25B electrolytic production — evidence that the same stack architecture is being claimed for multiple downstream products.
Filing activity climbed steadily from 2017 through a 2024 peak, then eased off. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent year on any trend line understates true activity, but the shape of the curve — a rise to a clear peak followed by a pullback — is consistent enough across the dataset to read as a genuine plateau rather than a data artefact.
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Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 995 families: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how the underlying claims distribute across eight IPC subclasses.
A rise, a peak, a pullback
Filings grew from 28 in 2017 to a peak of 129 in 2024, roughly doubling by the 2022 midpoint of 75. The partial 2026 figure of 16 sits well under trend, consistent with the normal publication lag but also with a genuine slowdown after the 2024 peak.
Separation and water treatment dominate, but metals and electrolysis are substantial
B01D (699) and C02F (527) together anchor the field as a water-treatment technology, but C01D, C07C, C01B, C25B, C22B and C12P each carry over 60 records — a sign that lithium, organic acid, and metal-extraction applications of the same stack technology are claimed in real volume, not as afterthoughts.
Shares are the percentage of the 995 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Electrodialysis Resource Recovery with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about electrodialysis resource recovery and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe records the field cites most, and one worth reading in full
US20200406194A1 — Electrodialysis process and bipolar membrane electrodialysis devices for silica removal
Provided are electrodialysis systems for removing silica from a desalinated water stream and methods for removing silica from a desalinated water stream. For example, described are bipolar membrane electrodialysis devices for removing silica from water comprising one or more anion exchange membranes; one or more bipolar membranes; and a pair of electrodes comprising a positive electrode and a negative electrode. Also described are electrodialysis systems comprising: one or more electrodialysis devices for the removal of dissolved ions and one or more bipolar membrane electrodialysis devices, wherein a product inlet stream of the one or more bipolar membrane electrodialysis devices comprises…Filed by TEXOPCO, LLC, published 2020-12-31. Chosen here as a representative example of a bipolar-membrane device claim, not as the single most important patent in the set.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6221225B1 | Apparatus and process for electrodialysis of salts | 196 |
| 2 | US6258276B1 | Microporous membranes and uses thereof | 196 |
| 3 | US20040055955A1 | Production of purified water and high value chemicals from salt water | 132 |
| 4 | US20110203929A1 | Recovery of lithium from aqueous solutions | 127 |
| 5 | JP2009269810A | Method for producing high-purity lithium hydroxide | 127 |
| 6 | US7083730B2 | Production of purified water and high value chemicals from salt water | 127 |
| 7 | US20180148350A1 | Method and System for Treating Brine Waste Water | 116 |
| 8 | US6004445A | Electrochemical methods for recovery of ascorbic acid | 83 |
| 9 | US5567293A | Electromembrane processes for the treatment of kraft mill electrostatic precipitator catch | 76 |
| 10 | CN108517409A | 一种从废旧动力电池正极废料中回收有价金属的方法 | 75 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside this corpus — read them as markers of influence on later claim drafting, not as evidence of current commercial importance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Four read-throughs of the same dataset, each pointed at a different practical question.
The claim space grew fast, then stalled
Filings roughly doubled between 2017 and the 2022 midpoint, then nearly doubled again to the 2024 peak before falling back. That shape usually means the core architecture — stack design, membrane arrangement, electrode configuration — is now well covered, and new filers are pushed toward application-specific claims.
Prior-art risk is concentrated in Chinese filings
With 469 records filed in China against 142 in the US, 112 at the EPO and 75 via PCT, any freedom-to-operate search that skips Chinese-language filings is working from less than half the relevant prior art.
Downstream product claims outnumber pure water-treatment ones combined
B01D and C02F cover the stack hardware, but C01D, C07C, C01B, C25B, C22B and C12P together account for a large share of the corpus — evidence that lithium hydroxide, organic-acid and metal-recovery claims are riding the same membrane technology rather than sitting outside it.
The leading filers have gone quiet
Every assignee with meaningful historical volume, including the largest Chinese filers, recorded zero filings in the most recent tracked year. That is consistent with either portfolio consolidation, a slower Chinese filing cycle, or the normal publication lag masking work still in the pipeline.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to electrodialysis resource recovery, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the ground, and where the gate sits
Ownership in this corpus is unusually clustered: a small group of related Chinese entities co-file heavily with each other, while the rest of the field is a long tail of single- or few-filing organisations.
A tight industrial cluster around Yibin
The strongest co-assignee link in the dataset — 27 shared families — sits between two related Yibin-based fibre and chemical entities, with a near-identical link to a third affiliated chemical company. That pattern points to one integrated industrial group filing jointly across its subsidiaries rather than independent competitors converging on the same claims.
The foundational claims are two decades old
The two most-cited records in the corpus date to the early 2000s and cover basic electrodialysis apparatus and microporous membranes — evidence that the core hardware claims were settled early, pushing later filers toward application and process claims instead.
No current leader by recent filing volume
None of the historically largest filers — spanning Chinese state chemical groups, fibre manufacturers, and specialty chemical firms — show any filings in the latest tracked year, leaving the field without an obvious current pace-setter.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) | 0 | — |
| Yibin Sili Group Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Electrosynthesis Company, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Yibin Sili Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Yibin Haixiang Chemical Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Archer-Daniels-Midland Company (ADM) | 0 | — |
| Sinopec Research Institute of Petroleum Processing | 0 | — |
| Nemaska Lithium Inc. | 0 | — |
Turning this landscape into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision
The data points to where claims are dense and where they are not. Deciding what to do with that requires reading the actual claim language, not just the counts.
Check freedom-to-operate before drafting
With claim density concentrated in stack hardware and China holding the largest single share of filings, a targeted search of Chinese-language prior art is the first thing to run before drafting new claims in this space.
Run a freedom-to-operate search in Eureka →Track the quiet leaders
Zero latest-year filings from every historically active assignee could mean consolidation, a lull, or work still hidden by publication lag. Monitoring their application pipelines directly answers which it is.
Set up assignee monitoring in Eureka →Common questions about electrodialysis resource-recovery patents
It covers electrodialysis, electrodialysis reversal, and bipolar membrane electrodialysis processes claimed specifically for recovering value — acids, bases, lithium, or other salts — from an aqueous stream, rather than simply desalinating water for disposal or reuse. In practice this shows up in patent classifications spanning separation processes (B01D), water treatment (C02F), alkali-metal compounds (C01D), and metal extraction (C22B), because the same membrane stack is claimed against different downstream products. A search limited to desalination classifications alone will miss most of this corpus.
Ownership in this dataset is unusually clustered around a small group of related Chinese chemical and fibre manufacturing entities that co-file heavily with each other, alongside established Western names in membrane apparatus and lithium recovery. Notably, none of the historically largest filers show any filings in the most recent tracked year, so there is no single current pace-setter by recent volume. Anyone tracking this space should look at co-assignee patterns, not just standalone company rankings, since related subsidiaries often file jointly.
No — filings rose from 28 in 2017 to a peak of 129 in 2024, but the partial most-recent-year count sits well below that peak. Because patent publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent year always looks artificially low, but the shape of the curve after 2024 suggests a genuine slowdown rather than just a reporting gap. That pattern is more consistent with a maturing claim space than an emerging one.
The core stack hardware — membrane arrangement, electrode configuration, basic bipolar membrane devices — is densely claimed and anchored by citation leaders dating back roughly two decades. Less crowded ground includes selective separation of similar ions such as lithium from magnesium, fouling and scaling mitigation specific to bipolar membrane stacks, and process control for continuous acid-base pH-swing operation. These branches show real technology volume in the IPC data but no single dominant assignee cluster, which is a different risk profile from the hardware claims.
Not necessarily — high filing density means the claim space around stack hardware and basic process steps is occupied, which raises freedom-to-operate risk, but it does not by itself indicate that the underlying technology is commercially proven or optimized. The most-cited patents in this corpus date to the early 2000s, and citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations, not because they remain the most relevant art today. A newer filer should weigh claim density against where the field's actual commercial deployments sit.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.